Gerda Scheepers. Body Corporate

About

This new group of works focuses on the idea of an abstract body, the exhibition’s main focus being a group of sculptural works, made as a starting point, from generic instant garment closets. Installed throughout the space, Scheepers having re-issued thesefound objects, replaces the original with something valuable and self- designed, their internal structures both imitated and partially modified, having painted their surfaces and replaced parts with studio fabrics and body shaped cutouts. 

References to clothing draw upon the exhibition’s theme of the ‘invisible’ body with the closets mirroring bodily gestures. In conjunction Scheepers’ materials imitate physical and psychological gestures or postures like being tired, falling apart, having an expression, having the blues - almost like material ‘actors’ in a narrative. In this sense there is an idea of a performative whole in the exhibition though all works act both in combination with each other as well as alone.

Forming part of a simultaneously gestural, physical and formally methodized process, Scheepers’ relation to her materials and studio is very much the foundation of her finalised works. With works often showing their making and notes for making as well as plans of the studio and architectural plans of her home, with gesture, motif and method merged as one layer.

There is often a shifting of roles amongst her many references such as architecture, television sitcoms, furniture and clothing, referencing within them, her everyday, notes to herself and future plans for works and exhibitions. Here she continues this part of her process, by including the mundane objects of her everyday, in this instance the lo-fi aesthetic of an instant garment closet and explicitly referencing ‘a body’ (indeed one work here is a depiction of the digestive system). The physical and psychological spaces around people, and the body as address for the tensions that arise from them, informs the tensions and narratives within her work.

Born in 1979, Scheepers lives and works in CapeTown. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘SITCOM,’ Blank Projects, CapeTown (2016); ‘Psycho Socio Surface,’ Blank Projects, Cape Town (2014); ‘A Social Life (of Image), Mary Mary, Glasgow; ‘Ca.Dilemma,’ Pigna Space, Rome (with Marieta Chirulescu) (both 2013); ‘Low and Partial-Romantic Comedy,’ Kunstverein Nueremburg; ‘Medium and Modality,’ Oslo10, Basel (both 2012); ‘Rauminhalt Aquivalente,’ Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin; ‘Relations short before Form,’ Koffer Ausstellungsraum, Berlin (both 2011). Selected group exhibitions include ‘She might be,’ Delmes & Zander, Cologne (2016); ‘Furniture: a sculpture exhibition,’ Blank Projects, CapeTown; ‘Group Show,’ Galerie Micky Schubert, Berlin (both 2015); ‘One Man’s Trash (Is Another Man’s Treasure), Danjuma Collection, London; ‘Part One,’ Warhus Ritterhaus, Cologne; ‘Bild und Anpassung,’ Palais fur aktuelle Kunst, Gluckstadt; ‘Inside Arrangement,’ Mary Mary, Glasgow (all 2014); ‘Painting Forever!,’ KW Berlin; ‘Door Between Either and Or,’ Kunstverein Munich; ‘Anywhere out of this world,’ Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen (all 2013); ‘The Stairs,’ Algus Greenspon Gallery, NewYork (2012).